Re: The Quiet Man--how so? Is it about Mary Kate's obsession with her own dowry? Or her brother's obsession with it?
Neither. The dowry is explained very well: "Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of having my own things about me . . . Until I've got my dowry safe about me, I'm no married woman. I'm the servant I've always been, without anything of my own!" It is not a matter of money; it is a matter of identity, which Sean fails to understand. (He really should, because he bought his ancestral cottage White o' Morning for the same reasons, a piece of tangible past like Mary Kate's fortune that was her mother's and her mother's mother's before her. And eventually he does, or there would be no happy ending. But it takes a little time.) It's the way the film starts as a fairly straight romance-drama crossbred with ensemble comedy—but the two central issues, Mary Kate's dowry, Sean Thornton's past, are quite serious—and then suddenly the realism snaps and it's all ludic carnival in the final stretch, complete with broken fourth wall. It's like the ritual subtext turns into text. And somehow it doesn't break the film.
no subject
Thank you!
Re: The Quiet Man--how so? Is it about Mary Kate's obsession with her own dowry? Or her brother's obsession with it?
Neither. The dowry is explained very well: "Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of having my own things about me . . . Until I've got my dowry safe about me, I'm no married woman. I'm the servant I've always been, without anything of my own!" It is not a matter of money; it is a matter of identity, which Sean fails to understand. (He really should, because he bought his ancestral cottage White o' Morning for the same reasons, a piece of tangible past like Mary Kate's fortune that was her mother's and her mother's mother's before her. And eventually he does, or there would be no happy ending. But it takes a little time.) It's the way the film starts as a fairly straight romance-drama crossbred with ensemble comedy—but the two central issues, Mary Kate's dowry, Sean Thornton's past, are quite serious—and then suddenly the realism snaps and it's all ludic carnival in the final stretch, complete with broken fourth wall. It's like the ritual subtext turns into text. And somehow it doesn't break the film.